The CBCE program places students in internships and preceptorships that provide invaluable hands-on training and needed care to the communities they serve.
As is often the case with people who become chiropractors, Jessie Hrushka learned the value of the field as a patient. While studying nursing in college, she suffered a health issue that led her to seek a chiropractor’s care. “I was getting bad headaches in school and decided to go to a chiropractor,” Hrushka says. Having entered college looking to help others through health care, her positive experience with chiropractic led her to see the field as a potential path for herself. “I thought, ‘Oh, this is an option,’” she adds.
In addition to her experience as a patient, Hrushka encountered the chiropractic field as part of her nursing studies. “I was shadowing a chiropractor and loved it,” she says. Considering the field further, she realized that it aligned with her values as an aspiring health care practitioner. “I was interested in conservative care where I could help provide people with lasting results and not with pharmaceuticals,” she says.
Learning Through Practice
Ben Partridge, DC, a chiropractor Hrushka shadowed had received his degree from University of Western States. When it came time to apply to a chiropractic program, Hrushka was so sold on the UWS program that she never completed her applications to other schools. She says she chose the Portland program because it was more evidence-based than others she considered and because it focuses on the physical therapy and rehab aspects of chiropractic, not merely manipulation. “When I have my own practice one day, I would like to do a lot of the rehab and physical therapy and not just adjustments,” she says.
Hrushka secured her first internship through UWS’ Community-Based Clinical Education website. Looking for a practice near her family in Colorado Springs, she contacted Michael Macri, DC, of Evergreen Spine & Sports Medicine, who is participating in the CBCE program whom she had shadowed in the past.
“I really loved the way that he ran his practice,” Hrushka says. “They did a lot of physical therapy rehab, a lot of soft tissue as well as adjusting.” Additionally, Hrushka appreciated the scope of the practice, which included massage therapy, acupuncture, and a muscle relaxation technique called dry needling. “The literature says that the more modalities you use, the better results you get,” she says. After observing for her first week, she began performing adjustments. By the end of her internship, she was conducting most of the visit.
An Eye-Opening Journey
Having graduated from University of Western States in June 2025, Hrushka is currently completing her preceptorship at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Her experience in the VA system, which began in April and which runs through September, has been a stark contrast to her internship in Colorado Springs. The needs of the patients she sees now are much different than those she encountered during her internship, and the community she serves in Fayetteville faces a shortage of doctors.
Fayetteville is home to one of the highest concentrations of veterans in the country, so the chiropractic clinic is almost always at or over capacity, according to Hrushka. This makes it difficult for the two chiropractors on staff to see patients as often as would be best for their recovery. In addition, the VA’s patients are older, and most suffer from chronic pain, so their needs differ significantly from those of the young, healthy athletes Hrushka treated in Colorado Springs.
A typical day at the VA begins at 8:30 a.m. New patient visits begin with Hrushka taking a full patient history. “It’s the most thorough history ever,” she says. After this comes a physical exam and treatment. For follow-up visits, Hrushka asks patients how they have been since their last visit and, in addition to providing adjustments, Hrushka says, “We teach them exercises and stretches to do when they go home, because there’s such a long time in between visits.”
Takeaways for a Future of Service
The CBCE program offers students more than hands-on experience; it also provides flexibility in choosing internship locations, whether close to home or in areas where they hope to practice. This geographic flexibility is intentional, exposing students to varied patient demographics and regional health systems. As Patrick Battaglia, DC, assistant vice president of CBCE, explains, “In our community-based education program, students work with diverse populations, veterans, active-duty military, and Native populations. They’re exposed to a diversity of regions and health systems, big health systems like the VA and small private clinics. Students get a rich exposure across the diversity of the health care system that they will be operating in.”
For Hrushka, her experience in the CBCE program gave her a greater understanding of a chiropractor’s work as well as a grasp of how wide the patient experience can be, depending on the practice. Through the benefit of seeing a large number of patients, she gained confidence in diagnosing and treating people based on their varying needs. “In a sports clinic, if your population is all young, healthy people, you can make them feel fantastic and think, ‘Wow, I just healed this person,’” she says. “With other patients, it’s important to focus on, ‘I’m still helping them even if I can’t heal them 100%.’”
Looking ahead, Hrushka must take the fourth and last part of her board exam. She hopes to get licensed in Colorado and find a clinic to work for. “I am very passionate about the conservative care side of medicine,” she says. “It’s helpful to focus on what the patient can do for himself rather than going to a doctor every week for the rest of his life. I like to teach my patients the exercises and tools they can use for long-term relief.”
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